


Positional Play

by icewhisper



Series: The Truth Of It All [2]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Gen, Post-Ishval, some implied royai but not enough to warrant tagging it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:08:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23720590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: It wasn’t Maes’ fault. Coming home had been hard on him, too, and Roy… Roy had always made his own decisions, same as he had when he walked into her father’s bedroom with a uniform on and knew what his master would say.It doesn’t make the news Maes gave her any easier to stomach.
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye & Roy Mustang
Series: The Truth Of It All [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1695760
Comments: 4
Kudos: 74





	Positional Play

“How did you let this happen?” she asked Maes when she walked into the hospital room and saw Roy lying on the bed, bandages wrapped tight around his torso. It wasn’t the right thing to ask, not when  _ she _ hadn’t been there either. Not when Maes was hunched forward with his hands clasped like he was praying and his eyes were still red-rimmed.

It wasn’t Maes’ fault. Coming home had been hard on him, too, and Roy… Roy had always made his own decisions, same as he had when he walked into her father’s bedroom with a uniform on and knew what his master would say.

She circled around to the other side of the bed on legs that felt like they were ready to give out and thought that she’d reach out to grasp Roy’s hand if she could, but she  _ couldn’t _ . He didn’t have hands anymore. He didn’t have arms.

Taboo, she thought numbly as Maes’ breath shuddered. Roy had committed a taboo and his arms were…

“His apartment,” she forced out. “What’s-”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I can’t… There was so much blood. I…” He looked up at her, lost. “I don’t know what to do. I was going to wait at the bar for an hour before I went to check on him. If I had…”

If Maes had waited that long, Roy would have bled to death.

Jaw clenched and nausea churning her gut, she nodded. “He’s sleeping?” she asked, looking down at his slack face. He was too pale. She wondered how much of that had to do with blood loss.

“Drugged,” Maes corrected and she realized absently how bad he sounded. Hoarse. Exhausted. The bags under his eyes reminded her of the ones they’d all had during the war – the ones that had only just now been starting to fade from her own face.

Had she taken too much time to clean out her father’s home? If she hadn’t dragged her feet while she toyed with the option of simply never returning to the military, would she have been able to keep Roy from going so far? Probably, she thought, because if Maes had had help…

If Maes had simply asked for help and didn’t wait to call her until it was too late...

“Stay with him,” she ordered, even though he was ranked higher than her. This wasn’t military. It didn’t matter. “I’m going to call my grandfather.”

“Your grandfather?”

“Grumman,” she admitted and purposefully didn’t look at him. She knew he was probably staring at her, shocked, and that was exactly  _ why _ she kept their relation under wraps. “He likes Roy. He’ll keep people from finding out how this happened.”

“What?” he asked, incredulous. “You think he’s going to stay in the military after this?”

“Don’t you?” she asked simply. “You’re not the only one who knows how high he was reaching.”

“He can’t reach for  _ anything _ right now, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I’ve noticed,” she snapped and couldn’t keep the tremble from her voice, "but he's stubborn."

"How do you come back from this?" Maes murmured, but she didn't think he was talking to her. She wasn't sure he was talking to anyone, really. 

"I don't know," she answered anyway, voice equally soft, and reached out to press her fingers to the pulse point at Roy's neck so she could feel the comforting thrum of his heartbeat. It wasn't like Ishval, wasn't like those nights they spent curled around each other with her hand closed around his wrist while they slept so she could sleep with the knowledge that even if everyone else was dead, Roy  _ wasn't _ . She couldn't wrap her fingers around his wrist anymore.

The thought made her want to cry.

Made her want to scream. 

She moved towards the door on shaky legs and paused near Maes long enough to grasp his shoulder. "Thank you for being there," she whispered.

He looked like he wanted to argue that he should have been there sooner, but he clenched his jaw and nodded.

She didn’t let herself look back as she left and didn’t let herself cry until she was on her grandfather’s doorstep and he’d pulled her inside. She inhaled the smell of his cologne like it would keep her from thinking about war, death, and the incomplete body lying in a hospital bed.

“Riza, what’s wrong?”

She hid her face in his chest the way she hadn’t since her mother died and  _ sobbed _ .

  
  


“I didn’t like him at first,” her grandfather admitted a while later, long after she’d told him everything and his maid had brought them each a cup of tea. “I was at his exam and when I saw his alchemy, I realized he was the one who had been studying under your father. You’d talked about him so much in your letters.” He shook his head, but his eyes stayed pensive as he stared down into his cup. “When they deployed the alchemists to Ishval, I had a feeling you’d follow him.”

“You did?” she asked, eyes wide in surprise. “You never told me that.”

“I’ve told you your whole life that you’re just like your mother,” he reminded her, voice weighted with implications he wouldn’t voice even in the privacy of his own home. Her cheeks flushed and he hummed. “When you followed after him into that godforsaken war, I hated him.”

“Grandpa-”

“I miss when you called me Bumpy,” he bemoaned. She smiled for just a second at the old argument – truly, she hadn’t called him that since she’d hit double digits – and he returned it. “See, there’s the smile. I didn’t say I  _ still _ don’t like him. He kept you safe out there.”

“My job was to keep  _ him _ safe.”

“And you did while you were over there, Riza. He’s not the first soldier to do something stupid once he’s come home and he won’t be the last. You’ve seen the papers.”

She had – pages after pages of obituaries and  _ died unexpectedly _ to cover up what everyone knew it meant – but it wasn’t supposed to be  _ Roy _ . “I have to believe he can come back from this and that means him still having a place in the military. I’ll find him an automail mechanic, if I have to.”

“I know some who aren’t tied to the military,” he told her. “In Rush Valley. I’ll make some calls.”

It was one weight off her shoulders, but she still felt like she was getting crushed beneath what remained. She tried to level it off with another sip of tea. It didn’t quite work as well as a shot of bourbon would have. “Thank you,” she whispered and tried not to start crying all over again when he grasped her hand.

“You never have to thank me for this, Riza,” he said gently. “Trust Bumpy to take care of things for you, okay?”

“Okay.”

Two days later, Gracia slipped into the hospital room, kissed Maes’ cheek, kissed Roy’s forehead, squeezed Riza’s shoulder, and told them she’d cleaned Roy’s apartment.

They didn’t talk about the blood still stuck under her nails or why she’d had to be the one to do it. That Maes couldn’t drag himself away from Roy’s side and that Riza had frozen outside the building and couldn’t even get her foot on the first step.

They didn’t ask about the  _ thing _ Maes had said had been in the middle of the circle, all twisted limbs and blood, and Gracia didn’t tell them what she’d done with it. Riza wasn’t sure she had the stomach to know, no matter how much a part of her wanted to know how sweet, quiet Gracia knew how to dispose of a body.

She slipped into the bathroom and they both watched as she calmly scrubbed the remaining blood out of her nails.

“I’m going to marry her,” Maes told her quietly.

“You’d be a fool not to.”

Five days after Maes called her in a panic – two after Roy had finally woken up and one after they’d gotten him to speak to them at all – her grandfather burst into the hospital room. Maes jumped, one hand going for the knife at the small of his back, as she shot right out of her own seat, but her grandfather ignored them both and walked straight to the one in the room who had merely watched him with dull eyes. He dropped a box onto the rolling table situated at the end of the bed and pushed it up towards Roy.

“I’m going to teach you to play chess,” he declared while Maes gaped at him and Roy blinked dully. “Every good strategist needs to know how to play a proper game.”

“I,” Maes started before he seemed to realize he didn’t know  _ what _ to say and shut his mouth again.

“Sir,” she tried, but her grandfather just shot her a little grin. It was one of his travel sets, she realized as he opened up the folded chessboard and pulled out the pieces. He started setting them up calmly.

“Would you two mind giving us a little while?” he asked. “I think the Lieutenant Colonel and I have some things to discuss.”

“I think I may have some trouble moving the pieces,” Roy said. It was the most he’d said since he woke up and there was a hint of… Riza thought it might be startled amusement in his voice. It probably was, she considered. That seemed to be the reaction a lot of people had to her grandfather. “Sir.”

“That’s why we call where our pieces go,” he pointed out as if Roy’s lack of arms didn’t matter. “You send a pawn to B4 and it will end up there. Make an order.” He winked. “You’ll be doing that a lot once they make you colonel. Not official yet, of course, but I’ve heard talks.” He kept setting up the board as if three sets of eyes weren’t staring at him, gobsmacked. “The room, Riza? If we may?”

She nodded and carefully pushed Maes out of the room.

“What’s he  _ doing _ ?” Maes asked her once they were in the hallway.

“I have no idea,” she admitted, because blood relation or not, her grandfather had always been eccentric. She didn’t understand everything he did. She picked at her cuticle nervously, wondering if he was making an attempt too soon. All she’d asked him to do was help her with a cover story and he’d…

Two hours later, patience wore thin and they returned to the room to see the men absorbed in a game. Roy sent a rook to G5 and her grandfather let out a good natured laugh as he reached out to move the piece for Roy. It took her grandfather’s black bishop and he left it on the side of the board with the other castoffs.

There was still a drawn look in his eyes, but it was mixed up with the calculating look Roy always used to get when he was trying to work something out and-

A smile.

It wasn’t a  _ big  _ smile – really, it was more of a hint of one than anything – but it was more than the dead-eyed stared he’d had since he’d woken up two days ago.

“I think I like your grandfather,” Maes told her softly as he bent towards her ear and for the first time since Maes had called her, panicked and crying, she thought things might actually be okay.

One step forward.

Roy lost the game, but her grandfather set up a new one almost immediately and started talking through the processes so Maes could follow the game as well. She watched with a practiced eye and, slowly, as she listened to the rules and declarations of moves, she dozed off in her chair.

The End


End file.
